As today's New York Times editorial reminds us, the High Court is now looking at some of the core principles of Roe v. Wade -- and Sandra Day O'Connor is not there to protect the rights of women by casting the deciding vote.
It looks like it's up to Justice Kennedy to defend Roe against the new rightwing Justices Alito and Roberts. Let's hope he's up to it.
And I was thinking that maybe the Dems rise to power meant that I could relax for a minute. Sheesh.
At issue, once again, is a deceptively broad ban on so-called partial-birth abortions. The court struck down a similar measure just six years ago, but since then two new justices have arrived. In the interest of women’s privacy and health — and in defense of the court’s own reputation — the justices should strike down this far-reaching assault on reproductive freedom.
In 2000, the court struck down a nearly identical Nebraska law for essentially two reasons. It found that the law’s imprecise language applied not just to a single late-term abortion method — as the ban’s supporters claimed — but would criminalize other common abortion procedures that are constitutionally protected. The court also ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it provided no exception to protect a woman’s health. . .
If Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who cast the deciding vote in 2000, had not retired, it is highly unlikely the court would have agreed to entertain this rerun. But without her, it is not clear that there are still five votes to defeat this assault on Roe , or to uphold the bedrock requirement that abortion restrictions have an exception for protecting a woman’s health.
It seems unlikely that Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito will provide the fifth vote. That means that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the current swing justice, is likely to decide this case. In 2000, Justice Kennedy joined those who would have upheld the Nebraska law. But at oral argument his questions suggested that he may take issue with Congress’s assertion that the ban would not put women’s health at risk — an encouraging sign.
Even justices who oppose abortion rights need to be concerned about that. They also need to worry about how the court will look if the recent change in its membership produces a starkly different result on an issue so vital to women’s privacy and health.
Roe v. Wade Politics Feminism Reproductive Rights Abortion Supreme Court Justice Alito Bush Justice Roberts News
